


The Humanity of Hannibal Lecter

by diningwithpsychopaths



Category: Hannibal (TV), Hannibal Lecter Tetralogy - Thomas Harris
Genre: M/M, Major character death - Freeform, why did I write this
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-20
Updated: 2014-03-20
Packaged: 2018-01-16 09:12:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1341520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/diningwithpsychopaths/pseuds/diningwithpsychopaths
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hannibal is forced to flee the country and he takes WIll with him. Months after they have settled in the Italian countryside Will is confronted with the reality that Hannibal Lecter is nothing more than human.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Humanity of Hannibal Lecter

There is a knock at the door. Sharp and formal and it rouses him from nodding off in the soft folds of the armchair in the afternoon sun. Will blinks, his mouth dry as it are wont to be during naps and straightens up from his slump. The knocking comes again, the beats between shortened to meet his heart beat. 

He isn't allowed to answer the door.

At least, he doesn't think he is.

Hannibal never even let him go outside without him by his side, but then, he had let him be around the house without the chain attached to his foot for almost a month now.

Will takes in a shaky breath and stands up. His footsteps towards the door in sync with the knocks and when he reaches the soft blue door he places his hand on the door knob to keep his body from shaking. If only the door had a peep hole, one would think that when living on the run Hannibal would have had the foresight to buy a place that had a door with a peephole. Will waits for a brief pause in the palpitating knocks and then opens the door.

It is a local policeman.

Will's heart beat escalates and his fingers twitch. He wishes he had brought something to defend himself and happy that he had not. He is not guilty.

“Sylvester Gray?”

Will's throat is too dry to answer and so he gives nod, but the panic that makes his veins feel heavy begins to dissipate at the use of his false name.

“We're sorry but ah, you live here with Dr. Vincent Fell, yes?”

The man's English is heavily accented and Will has to tune out his heart to understand him. He nods once more and the police man's already solemn expression falls.

“We are sorry to inform you, but Dr. Fell is dead.”

Will blinks.

“Excuse me.”

“Dr. Fell was in a very serious car accident. Hit by a truck, the driver had been drinking. We are very sorry.”

Will is still breathing. Still standing. But in mere seconds he doesn't feel present. He blinks again.

“Would you mind coming down to the station to identify the body? Our system is old and since you're both foreigner...”

Will swallows, but it only aggravated his throat. The accented words become another language to his ears and his grip on the doorknob tightens. Of course they wouldn't find anyone by the name of Vincent Fell in any database. For a moment Will wants to close the door on the policeman, beg off a visit to the morgue to indentify Hannibal's lifeless body, but he can't. More than that, though, he cannot even believe that Hannibal could be dead. Hannibal didn't die. Hannibal was the predator, the one who killed as if he were a God, and Will for these past few months had begun to almost believe that the man was. There was no scenario in which Hannibal died before Will.

“Mr. Gray?”

“Yes, I'll come. Let me grab my coat.”

The police man nods and Will walks away, the floor losing its tangibility beneath his feet as he grabs a coat and then shoes that feel too tight from a lack of being used. 

The policeman is already by his small car by the time Will joins him outside, shutting the door and not caring about locking it . He doesn't have a key anyways and nothing in the little cottage is his anyways. Just the dressings on a make-believe life.

The ride to the morgue is silent, the policeman thinking that Will wishes to appear strong in his grief. Halfway there Will realizes that he has grabbed one of Hannibal's coat, the thick dressy wool soft on his skin and the faint but heady scent of expensive cologne beginning to soak into his pores. Will rolls down the window.

The sky has begun to take on the pastels of an orange and pink summer sunset by the time they reach the morgue; the sun is still warm against Will's cheek and he wonders why he even brought the coat. 

Will follows the cop into the small morgue, the building is old but he can tell there have been recent renovations and an attempt to replace the centuries old smell of death, but not even five cans of air freshener can erase that stain.

A young woman sits behind the reception desk and after the officer asks her something in Italian she points to a descending staircase to their left and then gives Will a pitying look, but he doesn't let her catch her eye as he passes by.

The room he is led into is cold and windowless. There is a metal gurney and on top of it is a body. Will can't move any further than the entrance of the door even after it closes behind him.

“This is Vincent Fell, right?”

“Yes. That's him.”

The body before him is motionless, the tanned skin faintly purple beneath the fluorescent lighting. The graying straw colored hair matted with blood and the eyelids cover those burgundy eyes which always made him feel heavy, as if having drunk an entire bottle of fine wine the same color of those eyes. The piercing gaze of a hunter. Now it is covered, but Will has just as much trouble breathing as if they were gazing at him, demanding a reaction.

“Are you two, I mean..”

“I am the only one he has.”

The cop nods and then he and the mortician say something in Italian as Will does his best to keep the pendulum from swinging. It would be pointless anyhow since it isn't a murder. It is just a death. An ordinary death that could happen to anyone, but Hannibal isn't supposed to be anyone. He is a hunter, higher than the rest of them. Not even men and women trained to destroy monsters like him could capture him and put him down. 

A cracked giggle leaves Will's mouth and it earns him more looks of pity.

“What do you want done with the body?”

“Excuse me?”

“Er the body. It'll be a few days until the French Embassy gets back to us, but I mean I figured you'd want to decide what happens to the body.”

Will almost gives another giggle. The meat is ruined, and there is a gap around where his heart had been where something had punctured his chest. 

“Can you cremate him?”

The officer says something to the mortician and the older man gives a nod.

“Yeah. We'll contact you after your Embassy gets back to us. Sorry about this.”

“It wasn't your fault,” Will says, his voice flat. 

Hannibal's eyelids remained closed and Will' walks out of the room. The drive back is just as silent, but this time Will is remembering the way back.

Back at the cottage Will goes straight to the master bedroom where he knows Hannibal keeps a safe-box with other passports and money just in case. It's locked but Will easily finds something heavy to smash the lock with. There is no reason to be discrete. His heart beats the way it had in those first weeks with Hannibal. When he wasn't even allowed to leave the bed and had to rely on Hannibal for everything.

Will is stuffing clothes into a backpack when a whiff of expensive cologne takes over his senses and he turns his head around so fast he nearly has whip-lash. His heartbeat rising half in fear and half in relief and anticipation. But there is no one behind him. The air is heavy with the absence of Hannibal and Will remembers that he is still wearing Hannibal's coat. Will's chest feels heavy, his eyes wide and a lump begins to manifest in his throat, his eyes beginning to sting. His mouth is opened slightly but then he presses his lips firmly together and looks back down at his slapdash packing. His torso curves forward, his curls falling in front of his eyes, but that's OK. His vision becomes hazy anyways and his nose brushes against the collar of the coat. Hannibal's coat, still smelling as if Hannibal had just taken it off after a hunt, proof that the man can sweat. Proof that he is human.

A sob crack Will's throat and he takes a fistful of the coat and buries his face in it,almost prostrate as he bites his bottom lip and breathes in Hannibal.

Hannibal isn't supposed to be human.

He's supposed to be so much more. Just like how he wanted Will to be. Something so much more than the boring trappings of life.

~

A few streaks of orange linger in the dark blue sky as Will leaves the cottage, Hannibal's coat is button all the way up to his chin. The coat hangs on him more than it did Hannibal since Will still hadn't regained all of the weight he had lost when Hannibal first brought him to their new life, but that is alright.

Will has to walk into the small village a few miles from their cottage. They had only had one car and Hannibal, well Will didn't trust himself behind the wheel at the moment anyways.

The cold night air has fully settled when Will finds himself in front of the dark morgue. There is no security just as he had hoped because who would want to break into the morgue of a sleepy little village? 

The lock on the back door to break and thankfully there isn't an alarm system wired on the building. Will slips into the darkened halls where the dead rest as if coming home. In the past few months Will has learned to become comfortable with the constant memory of death in his mind, Hannibal pushing him to explore it in a fresh way that kept the dead from haunting him. The older man had wanted Will to embrace death as a way of life, to see its potential as art rather than the decay of nightmares.

Will's feet echo on the steel steps that descend down, but in the empty hallway every sound is swallowed up in the narrow hallway, not even his shadow making an impression against the cool darkness that smells like formaldehyde. The doors inside aren't locked and Will opens the third door and flicks on the light. A man sized cardboard box like the one they place bodies in to cremate rests on a metal gurney and Will walks over to it, lifts the top and a glance tells him that he has the right room.

He walks out to go find the crematory. He is relieved to find it behind the last door. The room smelling like ash and humans, but it was cold inside. Will turns on the light and is glad that the morgue has updated the crematory so that he won't have to spend hours stoking a fire. After making sure everything is ready Will goes back down the hallway and into the room where Hannibal is waiting for him.

Will doesn't pause to take in the body, he just places the top of the cardboard box back on, grips the handle of the gurney and wheels it out of the room, his knuckles white like the antlers in the first gift Hannibal ever gave him. Will's eyes never glance down as he walks down the hallways.

The crematory room has warmed up and Will opens the small door to reveal a small space enough for a tallish man to lie down in and Will brings the gurney to its entrance and only then does open the top of the box once more and looks down.

Hannibal appears as if he is sleep, the soft glow from the heat that emits from the crematory giving him the illusion of warmth. His hair is messy though and Will reaches down and presses his fingers against Hannibal's hair, smoothing it back to give him that inhuman look he always wore when there was no one to play pretend for. The blood and grease act as a gel to keep the hair in place and Will lets his finger tips trail down the cold skin, over the sharp cheek-bones, the thin lips that when parted look like a pout. There is a faint scratch of stubble and it makes him feel human.

The crematory is reaches its full potential and Will pulls his fingertips away and begins to bend down, but the stops. Hannibal doesn't return his gaze and before he can think about it Will replaced the top of the box and shoves it into the gaping hole. He then shuts the door and then waits.

When its over Will puts on protective gloves and then turns off the machine and opens the door, not bothering to put on a protective mask from the ash that blows out. It stings his mouth, his throat and he chokes, turning his face aside but when the ash as settled he picks up the rake and then reaches into Hannibal's coat pocket to pull out a locket. It's Hannibal's and inside is a lock of Abigail's hair. He had offered Will one as well but Will had flushed his down the toilet after it had been presented it him. He had not been allowed to leave their room for two weeks for his impudence.

Now Will opens the locket carefully and rakes Hannibal's ash towards the front of the opening and then very quickly sprinkles some of it into the locket and the shuts it. The gold warm in his gloved hand and he fastens the locket around his neck. He lets it slip past Hannibal's coat, into his shirt to rest just above where his heart had to be. The locket will never be opened again.

**Author's Note:**

> there's a part 2 which I may or may not write. It'd include Will murdering and ghost/memory imprint Hannibal watching. So we'll see if I'm up to it.


End file.
